


Chant of the Dead

by vogue91



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Book 6: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Gen, Halloween, Horror, Zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-16
Updated: 2017-12-16
Packaged: 2019-02-15 14:28:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13033107
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vogue91/pseuds/vogue91
Summary: “I’m not ridiculous, Hermione. You have no idea of the stories Fred and George used to tell me when I was a kid. At midnight, between Halloween and All Saint’s day, the dead came back to life, everybody knows it!”





	Chant of the Dead

_Steps. A deaf noise, softened only by the creaking of the too many dead leaves._

_Steps where he could hear his name, in a creepy hiss that preannounced an unescapable destiny._

_Steps._

“It’s a night like any other, don’t be ridiculous!” Hermione was losing her composure, and Harry couldn’t help but smiling. His best friend hated Halloween, and he knew it all too well.

For some reason Ron, who had grown up knowing that witches, werewolves and vampires were real, feared it more than him or Hermione, for whom Halloween as a kid meant only sweets and fun.

“I’m not ridiculous, Hermione. You have no idea of the stories Fred and George used to tell me when I was a kid. At midnight, between Halloween and All Saint’s day, the dead came back to life, everybody knows it!” he replied, confident.

While his friends kept arguing, and Hermione tried to make Ron see how illogical was his idea, Harry became estranged from the discussion.

Dead coming back to life... if only that had been true. He knew his friend’s words were supposed to scare him, and yet death had ripped too many victims among his affection for him not to want to see this superstition getting real.

His parents, Sirius... all those who were supposed to give him love were buried six feet underground, and he couldn’t help but curse his fate for what it had done to him.

He didn’t care if they were zombies or whatever. He would’ve given anything for Fred and George’s stories, born just to make fun of their younger brother, to come to life.

 

~

 

It was night. Harry could hear the wind blowing violently. The branches of the trees hit the glass of the window right next to his bed, preventing him from sleeping.

Sighing, he sat on the bed, taking out the Halfblood Prince’s book. He was intentioned to read it until he had managed to fall back asleep.

But Halloween had clearly other plans for him.

_Harry..._

He turned his head with a jerk, attracted from that hiss.

He thought he was going mad, then he remembered that the last time he had heard a voice he had ended up into the Chamber of Secrets fighting off a Basilisk.

_Harry..._

He heard it again.

It wasn’t the same voice he had heard four years before, it didn’t belong to a snake. It was hissing, but stable. It was determined. And it was horribly familiar.

He got up from the bed, going toward the window. The sky had acquired some uncertain shades, a mix of the black of night and the living red of fire. The trees stood out in the darkness as if they were the only masters, naked and disturbing.

_Harry..._

His innate curiosity, that which weighed on him like a curse, took over. Taken the Invisibility Cloak, he went out the dormitory, reaching confident the school’s gates. He didn’t know where he was going, but he could feel inside of him the illogical will of finding out the source of that call, as if he couldn’t help but going toward it.

Harry walked toward the Forbidden Forest like a robot, when he heard the voice again. He entered the naked trees, like he wanted to reach the point of origin of the forest, the point it was born from, the point it breathed from.

Because there’s no life around him right now. And nor in that voice.

“Harry.”

It had changed. It was so damn close.

He took off the cloak to make himself visible, and he turned around. His breath became short while he tried to extricate his gaze from those trunks, all terribly similar.

“Hi, Harry.” the voice came from behind him, but the boy for some reason was reluctant to turn around.

It wasn’t anymore a sweet whisper given to the wind he could fantasize about. It was real, touchable, and vaguely throaty. But, above all, Harry knew exactly who it belonged to.

He turned with an almost exacerbating slowness, swallowing.

The face he saw, however, was not what he was expecting.

It was _Sirius._ Only, it wasn’t the Sirius Black he had said goodbye to less than five months before.

His face was so twisted that it looked like he was wearing a mask, one of those typical of Halloween. His arms, covered with a torn and frayed shirt, were covered in red rivulets.

Blood.

No, that was not his Sirius.

“Are... are you a ghost?” he asked, low. The other one chuckled, a sinister laugh, very far from his typical howling. He hit violently his hand against the trunk of a tree, leaving a sensible hole. Harry shivered in front of the unnaturalness of that gesture.

“Could a ghost do this?” Sirius asked, hissing. He went closer to him, slowly, paying attention to make every step echo, as in a funereal symphony.

“What are you doing here? You’re dead.” the boy insisted, pulling back instinctively. Sirius smirked, which twisted even more his features, pale as a...

 _…as a corpse_ , Harry thought.

“Your tendency to point out the obvious makes me shiver, Harry.” his godfather mocked him, sneering. “And you should know what I’m doing here.” The boy put his hand quickly close to his wand, knowing it would’ve needed it.

“I haven’t got the faintest idea as to why you’re here, Sirius.” he pointed out, panting as in pure terror.

“I don’t know either with precision what I’m doing here. Or what _they_ ’re doing here.” from behind a tree, Lily and James appear, and they lined with their old friend.

Harry felt like he had just got Stunned. His knees gave up, and he fell on the ground, tightening his hands on the creaking leaves.

His parents and his godfather, the people he loved the most and that he had most missed, were in front of him.

Walking corpses, corpses that were wearing every sign of death.

The faces that should’ve been so seminal to his, were signed by the passing just like Sirius’.

“Hello, my child.” his mother told him. The sweet voice masked a shrill cry. Unreal. Harry closed his eyes for a few seconds, hoping he wouldn’t have saw them anymore once open.

Vain hopes, as it showed when he saw them still in front of him, getting even closer.

“We’re here because we’ve heard your voice tonight. We’re here because we’ve raised from our coffins, digging the ground with our bare hands.” his father’s voice was an accusation, while he showed him his hand covered in blackish soil.

“You’ve gotta be careful what you wish for, Harry. It could always come true.” Sirius was sardonic, as his godson had never seen him. Right that moment, thoughts were piling up in him mind, and he couldn’t understand how to extricate them.

He did the only thing that could’ve allowed him some time to think: he ran.

_Harry! Harry! Harry!_

The voices of those three overlapped, becoming almost a melody, like a chant of a funereal wake.

His own.

“We’re dead because of you, Harry! To protect you and your stupid like! You should’ve let us rest, but your selfishness knows no limit, does it?” Lily yelled, her voice sharper. Harry dried quickly a tear on his face, while he tried to convince himself that those weren’t his parents and that wasn’t Sirius, but only shells containing the hatred of death itself.

“You’re not real!” he shouted with all the voice he had, while keeping running. All of a sudden, he hit a solid outline which he identified with his godfather. Sirius took his wrist, pushing him violently against a tree.

“If I wasn’t real, I couldn’t be doing any of this.” he hissed, planting his nails in the frail flesh of the boy’s arm. Harry clenched his teeth, trying not to scream. It was unbelievable and little realistic, but part of his pride had still followed him in his adventure.

“You’d made of flesh and bones, but you’re not my godfather!” he replied, bravely. Sirius chuckled yet another time, while he looked at his back, watching Lily and James getting closer.

“It’s us, dear.” his mother told him, playing with his feelings in a macabre whirl of images that her face evoked.

Harry closed his eyes, focusing on the pictures Hagrid had put inside the album he gave him at the end of his first year.

Those kind faces, those loving features. Everything seemed so far away right now, in that damned forest, in the company of those who, he had to admit that, were nothing but gross zombies.

He raised his eyes to the sky, and hope lighted back up into him.

The vault that up until a few seconds ago had been blacker than darkness itself, was now becoming clearer. It wasn’t at all reassuring, it just served the purpose of giving the trees even more disturbing shades, but Harry decided to take it as a sign that the nightmare was coming to an end.

Taking advantage of his godfather’s distraction, who had raised his eyes in the very same direction, he wiggled out and started running again. He knew he couldn’t be faster than them, so he chose to hide, laying back behind an oak giant roots. He crouched ad waited.

Steps. A deaf noise, softened only by the creaking of the too many dead leaves.

Steps where he could hear his name, in a creepy hiss that preannounced an unescapable destiny.

Steps.

_Harry... Harry, come to us. You called us, and now we’re going to be together. For all eternity._

They chanted, accompanied by the sinister melody of the wind. He saw them getting closer and closer, their faces more hollowed, the circles under their eyes deeper. Their flesh seemed to decompose by the passing of the seconds, leaving room for just bones and blood.

Harry didn’t know what to do. His wand had fallen during the escape, but he was sure it wouldn’t have saved him anyway.

They found him, pulling him abruptly. In a moment he was surrounded by the creepy figures of those people he should’ve loved, he had loved. Until now.

Until his desires had won over rationality, giving hell on earth.

There was no time to think anymore. Their looks helped him react, without feeling any pity. He struggled, trying to scratch them, hit them, bite them.

 _They’re dead, Harry. What pain can you hope of causing them?_ he said to himself, bitterly.

“You’ve escaped death just because it found us first, Harry, but now there’s no one to sacrifice instead of you.” his father hissed in his ear.

Harry barely contained the instinct to burst into tears, and closed his eyes to get ready for the final blow.

Suddenly though, an orange flash flooded the forest. The trees seemed like alive, drawing abstract pictures in the sky, the view around him got coloured in lights.

His godfather loosened his hold on him, turning to watch the inflamed sphere that had just invaded the ether, and his parents did the same.

Slowly, without a flame, they started turning to ashes. There was no flesh anymore, nor bones, there was no blood.

All that remained of his nightmare was a harmless pile of greyish dust.

He breathed deeply a few times, without believing what he had just witnessed.

The way they had appeared they had left.

He barely stoop up, and limped toward the school. He tried to make it as quick as possible, as he believed to have heard a vague echo of the laments of those pitiful souls, so clear to give him goose bumps.

When he reached the school gates, he found Ron and Hermione waiting for him, both distressed.

“Harry, where the heck have you been? You almost gave me stroke!” his best friend told him, softening his voice once he focused on him.

His clothes were irreparably stained with soil and blood, like his face, unbelievably pale.

“What’s dead should stay dead.” he whispered, off. He went over them without another word, heading toward Gryffindor Tower.

There was something disturbing him still, a sensation that wasn’t leaving him, and he still couldn’t comprehend what it was. All of a sudden he stopped, and the noise vanished.

Harry understood.

He was that noise, it came from a gesture so natural, that was going to become a sign to his own hell.

Steps.


End file.
